


A Little Piece of Living

by Sororising



Series: Time that is Given [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cancer, Coming Out, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Religion, Slow Burn, Surgery, can be standalone, internalised biphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-05
Updated: 2017-08-13
Packaged: 2018-09-03 12:43:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8714401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sororising/pseuds/Sororising
Summary: "I - I care about you,” Sarah says, knowing her voice sounds wooden.She carries so many unspoken words inside her, day after day after day. It’s bone-deep, the weariness that comes from silence, from the identity she refuses to give a voice to - even inside her own mind.She can let these few small words free.“I know,” Freddie says, and her eyes look like they’re burning now, lit from inside with fire - the fire that levels forests, not the kind that keeps a hearth warm. “I know you do.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from this quote:
> 
> “Dear God," she prayed, "let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere - be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.” 
> 
> \- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith
> 
> -
> 
> Series title may change (suggestions welcome); it currently comes from the Tolkien quote "All we have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given us."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have so many thoughts about these two, it was hard to condense them into less than 20k, but I really didn't want this fic to get overwhelmingly long. I've now been inspired to write a canon-compliant (or maybe canon-compliant except for Sarah will survive) Sarah/Winifred fic, so watch out for that if you end up enjoying this one.
> 
> If you haven't read Grow to be: you've kind of already been spoiled for the surprise pairing in that, sorry. If you never want to read it and are curious about this, you should be fine reading this as a standalone. [Chapter 3](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7939999/chapters/18191722) of GTB might be a nice one to read for a little more background, but it really isn't necessary.
> 
> If you have read GTB: this is going to give you a LOT more insight into Steve and Bucky's moms (partly because we're getting Darlene's backstory in the giant sequel, and partly because I adore this particular rarepair). Which I think is nice, but if you would prefer to focus on Sam and Bucky, heads up that this isn't the fic for you. They're relevant and have appearances, hence why they're tagged, but they already have 110k words of story. This one belongs to Sarah and Winifred.
> 
> This chapter deals with a lot of potentially painful stuff, though mostly briefly; refer to the end notes for more detail.

* * *

* * *

Sarah Rogers meets Winifred Barnes when they collide in front of the door to a pre-natal class on breathing techniques.

“Oh, bloody - sorry, I’m so sorry, please, you go ahead.”

Sarah feels like she needs a few moments just to stand still and breathe deeply. She’s aware that’s why she’s come to this class, but she doesn’t want to be watched for _technique_ right now. She just desperately wants to get a bit more air into her lungs.

The woman she’d crashed into raises an eyebrow. It makes her look even more sophisticated than she already does, and Sarah is abruptly conscious of what _she_ must look like right now. Seven months pregnant, her belly straining through the threadbare dress she should probably have stopped wearing at four months, her hair limp and lifeless from the heat, and not a scrap of make-up on her face.

“I was leaving, not going in,” the woman says, her accent about as New York as any Sarah’s heard yet. She isn’t familiar enough with all the different areas yet to know with any kind of certainty, but she thinks it has the same kind of twang as the Brooklyn folks she’s met over the last few months. “Hey, you alright there?”

“I’m - I’m fine.” Sarah clears her throat, knowing that her tone hadn’t matched her words at all. “Just need a moment to get a bit of air, that’s all.”

The woman smiles, and Sarah can’t tell if it’s supposed to be kind or mocking. The people of this city are still a mystery to her, most days. “Well, I wouldn’t choose a street in Williamsburg to get some fresh air, myself,” she says, leaning back against the doorframe. “But each to their own.”

“I thought that was just me!” Sarah laughs, partly in relief, partly because she’s feeling a little panicked and she really wants to sit down. “I thought all the New Yorkers must just get used to the smell, I didn’t want to say anything to anyone.”

The woman laughs. “We don’t get insulted that easy. Anyway, I best get going. Was only picking up a few leaflets. Needed an excuse to get out for a bit, you know how it is.”

Sarah looks more closely. Under the fierce slashes of make-up - dark eyes, bright red mouth - and the even fiercer gaze, this woman looks - tired. And maybe something else, something that runs deeper than physical exhaustion.

“I’m Sarah Rogers,” she says, leaning against the doorframe and holding her hand out. “And I’m sorry about nearly knockin’ you into the rubbish. I forget I’ve got this big, some days.” She gestures quickly at her belly - she hopes her size means the baby’s going to come out nice and strong, because there have to be some benefits to the months of needing to treat standing up or sitting down as a mission rather than an everyday task.

“Your accent just hopped across the ocean, you know that?” the woman says, reaching out and shaking Sarah’s hand without hesitating. “Winifred Hubbard - ugh, Winifred Barnes, I mean. You can call me Freddie, though, all my friends do.”

Sarah tries not to look too pleased at the thought of being lumped into the same category as Winifred’s friends. “Not Winnie?” she says, because she would have thought that was a much more obvious nickname.

Winifred - Freddie, Sarah reminds herself - shrugs one shoulder. “I’m not really a Winnie,” she says easily, and Sarah can see what she means at one glance. _Winnie_ is the sort of name that would fit a grandmother - maybe that’s who Freddie had been named after. It conjures up images of soft knitted cardigans and homemade biscuits, not a leather jacket and cropped hair.

“Are you, ah.” Sarah gestures down to her belly. It would be rude to ask under other circumstances, she knows that, but surely when you meet someone outside a clinic specialising in pre and post-natal advice it’s alright?

“Nah, I popped my little devil out in March,” Freddie says easily. 

“Ah, right.” Sarah isn’t quite sure how she should be answering - _congratulations?_ She feels like she’s left it too long now. “I might as well head back home,” she says, hoping she isn’t being too awkward, wondering why she cares. “I was already so late for the class, I don’t think they’d like me much if I interrupted now.”

Freddie makes an odd expression that Sarah can’t quite place. “Yeah, they’re pretty intense about their breathing shit,” she says, before looking mildly embarrassed. “Not that - I mean, it might work for you?”

Sarah laughs, a little nervously. “I hope so. I’m - well.” Freddie’s been pregnant too, she reminds herself. “I’m absolutely terrified,” she admits, feeling light-headed as she hears her own confession.

“Aw, you’ll be alright,” Freddie says, looking slightly uncomfortable. “Hey, want to go for a coffee or something? You can grill me on whether the drugs they give you actually work and all that.”

Sarah blinks for a moment. She’s found it hard to meet people, these last few months. Joe’s work friends are lovely, but they’re still _his_ friends rather than _theirs._ “I - I’d love to, but don’t you have to get home?”

Freddie just shrugs, and hops back down to the sidewalk. “I can get away with another hour,” she says, already glancing up the street. “C’mon. What’s the worst that can happen?”

Sarah only hesitates for a moment before stepping down as well. “Alright,” she says quickly, not wanting to second-guess the offer. 

They walk along in silence for a short while, but it doesn’t feel awkward - at least, Sarah hopes she’s not the only one who thinks it doesn’t. She knows she’s slowing Freddie down, but New York heat is a very different feeling to Irish summers - heavier, somehow, not quite oppressive but not too far from it - and she honestly can’t walk quickly, these days. She tries not to think about how she's holding Freddie up; it hadn’t been her idea to go for coffee, after all, so there really shouldn’t be anything to worry about.

“Hey, you never said what’s up with the accent,” Freddie says after a few minutes, glancing over at Sarah. “How long since you got off the boat?”

“Well, it was a plane, not a boat,” Sarah says, before realising that it had probably just been an expression. Freddie doesn’t look like she’s laughing at her, though, when she looks over to check. “Ah, about six months. We didn’t actually know about this little surprise till after we got here.” She holds her stomach, the way she keeps doing automatically nowadays.

“That’s some housewarming present,” Freddie says, turning quickly into a narrower street, then pausing and slowing down immediately so Sarah can catch up without making a fool of herself by attempting a jog.

“It is,” Sarah says softly, and her words are genuine, even if Freddie had meant her remark lightly.

“And the accent?”

She’s really not going to let that one go, is she?

Sarah gives a little shrug, wincing when even that small movement somehow makes her heartburn flare up. “I guess I’ve been tryin’ to fit in round these parts. I know Irish doesn’t mean what it used to, but it still means I’m - different,” she says, wanting to say _an outsider,_ but feeling like that might be a bit too dramatic.

The way Freddie looks at her is unnerving. Like she’s seeing right through all the layers, the attempts to fit in and the changes she’s tried to make to things like her accent and her clothes, all the way through to the country girl who still can’t stop craning her neck in awe at how tall the skyscraper buildings are. “Well, welcome to New York, honey,” she says, and Sarah blinks at how casual the endearment had been. “Everyone’s different here, you’ll fit right in.”

Sarah feels herself blushing, just a bit, and suppresses the immediate urge she gets to hide her face. “Thanks,” she says, casting around for an easy change of subject. She’s never really liked talking about herself, especially not to people so much more - more - _worldly_ \- than she is. 

“Here we are,” Freddie says, gesturing to a tucked-away coffee shop that Sarah might not even have noticed was there if she’d been on her own. This city has so many different things to look at; sometimes it’s hard to just see what’s in front of your face.

They order their drinks and sit down in silence. Sarah gets a pot of tea; coffee’s been tasting especially bitter to her over the past couple of months, and maybe drinking tea makes her look a bit childish, but she’ll pick that over heartburn and acid reflux any day.

She searches her thoughts for something to talk about that isn't too awkward or too personal. “How’s your little one doing so far?” she settles on.

Mothers always want to talk about their babies, surely?

A look she can’t interpret flashes into Freddie’s eyes, but it’s gone in a blink. Maybe she was just imagining it. “Ah, he’s a darling,” Freddie says, pulling a man’s wallet out from her pocket and flipping it open. “Here.” 

Sarah leans in. “Oh, how sweet,” she says, honestly meaning it. The baby looks about two months old in the picture, but he’s already got a funny little tuft of brown hair sticking up, and his eyes are crinkled up at the edges like he’s smiling at some private joke. “He’s so lovely.”

She feels a sharp kick just then, and quickly pulls herself back into her chair before she doubles over and does something horribly embarrassing like hit her head on the table. “I think this one’s eager to get out,” she says between breaths. “Oh, maybe they’ll be friends!”

She blushes again as soon as she says it. Why would their children be friends? She doesn’t even know where Freddie lives, and even if they happen to be close location-wise doesn’t mean they’ll ever meet up again. This is just a random kindness for a stranger, that’s all, and she shouldn’t be reading anything more than that into it.

“Maybe,” Freddie says, not looking either happy or displeased at the thought. She tucks her wallet away again. “Hope yours likes sleep a bit more than my Jamie does.”

“Jamie? That’s a nice name.”

“James Buchanan,” Freddie says, making a face when she says the second name. “George has a thing for presidents. I didn’t point out that Buchanan was most likely queer, he’d have flipped.”

Sarah knows her eyes go wide at that word, especially at having it spoken so easily. She hopes that Freddie hadn’t noticed.

A moment later, Sarah’s distracted by two realisations. That’s the first time Freddie’s mentioned her husband, she thinks. 

And she hasn’t mentioned Joe at all.

“He already hates when I talk about my activist days,” Freddie goes on, seemingly without noticing Sarah’s unease. “He’s such a _man._ He thinks we don’t need feminism anymore, can you believe it?” Sarah mutely shakes her head, sensing that an actual response isn’t required. “And as for gay rights, well.” She looks at Sarah sharply, as if she’s just remembered her presence. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to rant at you.”

“That’s - it’s quite all right,” Sarah says, feeling like her words are clumsy and a little too formal. She quickly reaches for her cup and takes another sip of tea, grateful for something to occupy her hands with.

Freddie sighs. “My friends were kind of pissed at me for getting pregnant. Not like I - anyway. Yeah. It’s nice to talk to someone who knows what it’s like.”

“It is,” Sarah says, before wincing. “Sorry, I have to go to the bathroom,” she adds, standing up very awkwardly. It’s not a lie - unfortunately, there isn’t really a single moment when it would be a lie, these days. Her bundle of joy really likes to aim the sharpest kicks at her bladder.

Oh, the joys of pregnancy, she thinks, as Freddie nods in understanding and points her in the direction of the toilets. She can’t really summon up the sarcasm she’s heard from other pregnant women, though, not even in her head.

The truth is - as painful and uncomfortable as every second of her life is right now - she’s too glad that she’s experiencing this at all to want to truly complain about a moment of it.

She’s been married for over two years, which means she and Joe have been - well, intimate, for over two years as well. And they had been close to giving up hope that anything would happen naturally, had been talking about how they could afford adoption procedures, how that would even work in a country where they weren’t citizens. 

And then everything had changed.

Maybe America was their good luck charm. She’d like to think so. As much as she will always, always love Ireland, she feels like here she could be - free, maybe. Be who she wants to be, even if she isn’t quite sure who that is yet.

After she’s finished in the bathroom, she takes a moment to splash cold water on her face, rolling her eyes when she feels another kick in response.

“Quiet in there, _a leanbh,”_ she says, gently resting a hand on her stomach. “You’ve got to be patient a while longer, I’m afraid.” She lowers her voice to a whisper. “I’m excited to meet you too, I promise. You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting.”

She glances in the mirror, but looks down again quickly. She doesn't want to remember what she looks like right now, especially not with Freddie's face fixed so clearly in her mind.

She walks back out, only to pause when she sees that the table they’d been sitting at is empty. She goes over to it anyway, not knowing what else to do, and sees a piece of paper tucked underneath her saucer.

**Sarah, I’m sorry, I’ve already left George alone with the baby longer than I said I would, I have to run. Was good to meet you. Here’s my number if you want to talk, about baby stuff or anything else. Yours - Freddie.**

And then there’s a number hastily scribbled along the bottom of the paper.

Well, Freddie had said that she needed to get back soon to baby James, right at the start of their conversation. There’s no reason for Sarah to be feeling this odd kind of almost-disappointment.

Then another thought strikes her, and she has no room left in her mind for anything except a mild panic.

She calls over the waitress, trying to make herself look as helpless as she can - she doubts she needs to do much, really. “Hello, I’m - I’m so sorry, I wasn’t expecting to be here, and I live so close, I can run back and get my purse -”

“Your friend already paid,” the waitress says, interrupting her. Sarah’s imagining that she puts an odd sort of emphasis on the word friend, she’s sure she is. She really needs to stop being so paranoid.

“Oh. Oh, thank you.”

She gathers her things together and leaves, knowing that her face is red. She walks back home as quickly as she can manage it; she’s out of breath by the time she climbs the stairs to their little apartment - she hopes the landlord fixes the lift - elevator - soon; she doesn’t fancy trying to get a pram up without it - but once she’s inside she feels something inside her relax.

It makes her feel a bit useless, waiting for Joe to get home from work, but there isn’t much else she can do. She’d been looking for nursing jobs before they’d found out about the pregnancy, but it wouldn’t have made any sense for her to accept one and then have to go on maternity leave straight away. And the States aren’t very good about giving proper maternity leave anyway, so they’re just going to try to make do on Joe’s salary as best they can.

They’ve made it this far, she keeps reminding herself. They can do anything they put their minds to; they just have to stand tall and keep going.

* * *

* * *

There’s a twinge of unease deep inside Sarah’s chest that she doesn’t interpret until late that evening, when she’s sitting on the sofa with her feet in Joe’s lap, listening to one of the few records he’d made space in his suitcase for. She knows this particular one so well that it fades into the background of her thoughts, a comforting soundtrack for the troubling loops her mind keeps taking her on.

She opens her mind before she can second-guess herself again.

“Joe?” 

“What’s troubling you?” he asks, still rubbing the spots on her feet that never seem to stop aching.

“I didn’t say anything was,” she points out, instead of asking her question. 

“And I asked what’s troubling you,” he says, smiling his quiet smile that never fails to make her feel lighter.

She rolls her eyes, knowing that he can tell she’s not annoyed with him. “You know me too well.” She hesitates before carrying on - does she really want to ask him this? “It’s just - you’d be fine being left alone with the baby, wouldn’t you?” she asks, hoping that he doesn’t think she’s insulting him.

He looks at her, and she knows she’s startled him from the way he takes a few seconds to respond.

“Well, of course,” he says finally. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

Oh, she _has_ hurt him, she knows she has. 

“No, no,” she says quickly, wanting to reassure him but not quite knowing how. She wishes she hadn’t asked now. How to fix it? “I - I met a woman today,” she tries, feeling unsure and a little shy, and hating both the feelings. “Outside the class. I was late, so we went to a cafe instead of going in. She had her baby in March, and she said -”

What exactly _had_ Freddie said? Or, written, rather.

Joe just looks curious, now. “What did she say?”

“Something about not wanting to leave her husband alone with the baby for too long,” Sarah says, twisting her hands together in her lap. “It just - it seemed strange, to me. I’ve never thought twice about you looking after the baby. _Our_ baby. I promise. It just - she made me think, is all.”

Joe leans back. He often doesn’t answer her straightaway, especially when he wants to think something through first. Sometimes it’s a little annoying - she wouldn’t mind if he just spoke his instinctive thoughts out loud; she doubts they’d be uninteresting - but mostly she likes that he takes his time with the things he considers important. He never wants to rush into a decision that could change things for them; they’d talked over their move to New York for over a year before it actually happened.

“Maybe he’s ill,” Joe says finally, and Sarah looks at him, trying to read his expression.

He knows her, sure, and she knows him just as well. “You don’t believe that, do you? You think it’s something else.”

She holds her breath. 

Joe sighs. “Maybe she’s just a worrier. Would be natural, with a new baby.” He smiles at her, but it’s far from happy. “Or, well. Could be that her husband is like old John Bates, or one of his lot.”

Sarah flinches away from that thought. “You think her husband’s a drunk? Or that he’s -”

She doesn’t want to speculate about anything worse; it already feels wrong, talking about Freddie’s private life with Joe like this.

Joe shakes his head. “I don’t know, acushla. You’re the one that met her. What’s her name, anyhow? Maybe she could use a friend.”

Sarah opens her mouth to reply, then quickly closes it again. “Winifred,” she says, not looking too closely at why she's using Freddie's full name. “Winifred Barnes.”

Joe's mouth twitches. “Well, you can bond over having names that no-one else gets landed with these days,” he says.

She pokes his stomach with her foot, though not nearly hard enough to hurt. “Sarah is a lovely name,” she says primly, knowing full well that he wasn't talking about that.

“It surely is,” he says, his eyes crinkling into that smile she's loved since they were children. “But Sarah Eibhleann-Muirgheal?”

“You know my ma wanted me named for both my grandmas! And it’s not so hard to say, just to spell.”

Joe grins even wider. “Still. I practised saying it every time I was out in the fields, before the wedding. Didn't want to get our vows wrong.”

Sarah hadn’t known that. “Joe Rogers, you old sap,” she says, knowing that the smile on her own face is every bit as foolish as the one on his. 

The baby kicks her, and she almost thinks she sees a tiny foot poking out of her stomach for a split second. She groans. “Need to walk around for a few minutes. Someone’s getting restless.”

“That little one’s going to be a fighter,” Joe says, swinging her feet onto the floor and helping her stand up.

“Just like his daddy,” Sarah says, meeting Joe’s eyes and smiling.

People never think of Joe as strong, or brave. He’s not loud enough about his courage for people to realise it for what it is. 

But after Sarah’s brother had been shot through the gut - he’s alive, but it had been touch and go for a while - when he accidentally got on the wrong side of an IRA fringe group, when Sarah hadn’t been able to leave the house without her hands shaking for weeks, jumping at shadows and flinching at every sudden noise -

Then Joe had sat her down, talked about how his office needed someone to head up a long-term project in New York - something about integrating modern agricultural practices with traditional ones; they wanted someone who had practical experience as a farmhand - and asked her if she wanted him to apply.

And now they’re really here. It feels like a dream, still, a surreal, absurd dream, even though she vividly remembers packing up their little rented house, remembers the way her stomach had lurched as the wheels of the plane had left the ground of her country, and the way her eyes had been saucer-wide as they’d turned once more towards the earth, hours later, the lights of their new city spread out in an endless, gleaming carpet below them.

They’re here. It’s no dream.

Joe starts singing along to the record, softly, sweetly, as they walk around the room together. 

Steadfast, is what he is, Sarah thinks - not for the first time. And there are people who might call that another word for boring, she knows there are. She doesn’t care. She has someone who she knows will be at her side, loving her, for as long as they live, and that counts for more than all the fleeting excitement in the world ever could.

* * *

* * *

“I really thought it would be an early birth,” Sarah says mournfully, staring down at her belly. 

Joe looks like he’s trying to project a loving, calming aura around himself. His slightly furrowed brow and pinched lips are ruining it, but she isn’t going to point that out. It’s the thought that counts, and all that malarkey.

“I’m sure it won’t be long,” he says, and she manages to find the energy to smile at him.

“It will be worth it, anyway,” she says, because it _will_ be worth it, it’s just very difficult to remember that when she feels like the weight of her stomach wants to sink her whole body deep into the ground.

“Is there anything I can do? I want to help. In any way I can, acushla.”

Sarah sighs quietly to herself. “I know, darling, and you’re wonderful. I sometimes wish I had some friends who’d been through this before, is all.”

“That’s one thing I can’t be, I’m afraid,” Joe says ruefully, sounding as though if he could he would take every painful, terrifying, uncertain moment of pregnancy away from her, leaving her with only the parts they tell you about in the stories: the joy, the blissful knowledge that you’re creating a new life. 

The hope, that you can make this child’s life better than your own.

“Don’t you worry about me,” she says, knowing the words are pointless. He’ll listen, sure he will, but without any intention of obeying her. Joe’s a worrier. He tries to hide it from her, sometimes, but she knows him too well. She’s always been able to tell when he’s lying, or - well, he almost never lies outright, but when he’s keeping something from her that he thinks might cause her pain.

“Oh, I know,” he says, looking hopeful.

Sarah doesn’t have the strength for much hope right now. Not “What is it?”

“What about that Winifred? You still have her phone number, don’t you?” Joe asks, knowing full well that Sarah does. She’d tucked it inside a book, feeling odd about keeping it in her purse but not wanting to lose it.

Sarah wrinkles her nose up. She doesn’t want to talk about Freddie right now; she isn’t sure why. “I guess. It’s just - she made me feel like such a country bumpkin.”

“Did she?” Joe asks, with that expression on that always means he’s about to say something profound. Or something irritating. “Or did you make yourself feel that way when you were with her?” 

It’s wonderful, most of the time, having someone who knows her inside and out - well, save for a secret or two that she doubts she’ll ever share with a soul, so that hardly counts.

Most of the time. 

“Maybe a bit of both,” she admits, not willing to say out loud that he couldn’t be more right. Freddie hadn’t done or said anything to make her feel like she wasn’t ever going to fit in here; it had just been how she’d - well, how she _was_ that had made Sarah feel self-conscious, and she isn’t about to blame anyone but herself for that.

“You can’t compare your lives,” Joe points out gently. “You grew up in such different places. Maybe she’d have rather had your life, you never know.”

Sarah doubts that. “Maybe,” she says reluctantly. “It’s just - she went to all these wild protests in the eighties, against racism, or for women’s rights, or for -”

She chokes back the words _queer people;_ she isn’t quite ready to say them, not just yet.

“Do you know what I was doing in the eighties?” she says instead.

The highlight of her days back then had been the three days a week she caught the bus into the city for her nurse’s certificate. Well, that and the moments she’d managed to have with Joe, she can admit that had been a wonderful development.

Joe raises an eyebrow. “I hope that’s rhetorical. I was there, remember?”

Sarah sighs. “I’m sorry. I know I’ve led a different life to her. A quieter life. I’m not - complaining, far from it. It’s just -”

She doesn’t know how to end that sentence.

_It’s just - I love you, but I don’t know what you’d say if I told you I could have loved a woman in the same way._

_It’s just - I feel, sometimes, like this isn’t the life I was born to live._

_It’s just -_

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m so grateful for everything I have, I really am.” It’s not a lie, not at all. And if it isn’t the whole truth, well, the whole truth sometimes does nothing but hurt.

She can make a confession on Sunday, if she isn’t in hospital already.

“I’m so lucky to have you,” Joe says, and she knows he’s being sincere, because he’s almost never anything else.

“I’ll call Fr - Winifred sometime after the baby’s here,” she says, not quite sure if she means it or not. “Maybe we can arrange a playdate, or something?”

Joe smiles at her, and something inside her - something that she hadn't even realised was tense - relaxes. Which is strange - she hadn’t been expecting him to say no, surely?

“Good idea,” he says. “Now, you go put your feet up. Our little one’s going to be joining us soon, and we’ll need all the rest we can get before then.

* * *

* * *

“You pick,” Sarah says, almost too tired to form even those two short words.

Joe doesn’t even look like he’s heard her. She forgives him instantly, though, because the reason he’s so distracted is because he’s staring down at their baby - their _baby,_ oh, this is really happening - in complete awe.

It had all been worth it. Everything in her entire life has been worth it, because it had formed together and led to this one, shining, perfect moment.

“He’s so tiny,” Joe says, and his voice holds a reverence that makes her heart ache. 

“Bring him here?” she asks, clearing her throat as soon as she’s finished the question. She feels a bit too close to tears right now for her liking - though if there’s ever a time for joyful tears, she can’t think of a better one.

He moves so that he’s sitting on the edge of the bed, and lowers their baby down into her arms with the most beautiful gentleness. She folds her arms together as easily as though it’s an automatic reflex, cradling the little head instinctively, tucking the soft blanket around his limbs as though she’s done this thousands of times before.

As though she was born to do this.

“Steven,” Joe says, and Sarah smiles at him, without taking her eyes off their baby. He’ll know she means the smile for the both of them.

She looks up, though, as she hears the door open, disturbing the peace of their small family.

One of the doctors comes in, followed by a nurse, both with expressions that are so clearly trying not to show their worry, and Sarah feels her heart clench inside her chest.

She starts to cry, then, as her baby is taken away, and the few words that manage to creep into her mind only make her sob harder: _results came back, incubator recommended, I’m so sorry, do everything we can, Sarah, Sarah, acushla, asthore -_

To think that only a few heartbeats ago she had been holding back tears of joy. She would give anything for it to be those ones falling now, rather than those of sorrow.

“No,” a broken little voice cries out, and with a shock she recognises it as her own.

She doesn’t cry. She never cries. It isn’t a matter of pride, or stubbornness.

It’s just - she’d always known that once she started, she wouldn’t know how to stop.

Joe holds her, his own eyes far from dry, and they cry together. She wraps her hands around his, and clings on, as tightly as he holds onto her, because in this, as in all things, they are together.

 _For better or for worse,_ she thinks, but it was never, never supposed to be like this.

* * *

* * *

“He may never have the same quality of life as other children,” the doctor says, in that sympathetic-but-unemotional tone that Sarah already detests. “You’ll have -”

“We’ll do anything we need to,” Joe says firmly, cradling little Steven in his arms, looking down at him and smiling as though he never wants to do anything else with his life.

She can understand that. Steven is _alive,_ and there is no fear or worry in the world right now that could drown out that knowledge.

“He’s a fighter,” Sarah says, and her voice holds steady. “We all are. He’ll be just fine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few notes: The IRA [(Irish Republican Army)](http://terrorism.about.com/od/groupsleader1/p/IRA.htm) is only briefly mentioned here, because that's a whole other fic I want to research sometime, but its brief mention doesn't mean that the impact of various IRAs on Irish and Northern Irish society wasn't/isn't extremely significant. 
> 
> Feedback and concrit always welcome, especially for this fic as I know it isn't a popular pairing (understatement).


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Detailed chapter warnings in end notes.

* * *

* * *

New York is so cold in winter. Had it been this cold last year, when they’d first arrived? Sarah honestly can’t remember. Maybe they’d been too thrilled with the newness of it all to notice the downsides; too starstruck to feel something so mundane as the chill in the air.

She leans anxiously over the top of the pushchair, checking that none of Steve’s blankets have slipped off. She reaches over to tuck them round him a little more tightly, just in case, and -

“Shitfuck,” a voice says in front of her. Sarah jerks her head up, past the new pushchair that’s just appeared - and narrowly missed crashing into hers, she’s pretty sure - to see -

“Freddie!”

Freddie looks at her blankly for one horrible second. “Holy - Sarah, hey. How’re you? Sorry for nearly mowing you down.”

Sarah laughs, startled and relieved all at once. “No, no. Not your fault. I shouldn’t have stopped in the middle of the sidewalk.”

Freddie grins at her. It makes her look years younger. “Look at you. _Sidewalk._ Getting to be a real American, are you?”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Sarah says, smiling back. She hadn’t ended up calling Freddie after all; they’d been so busy taking care of little Steve, and it had turned out that paternity leave over here wasn’t much of anything at all. So she’s on her own for at least a few hours most days, keeping little Steve warm and fed and - hopefully - happy. She hasn’t had much time to think about anything other than first-time motherhood. 

But - it had been so nice, last time, to talk to someone who understood her. 

“Let me buy you a drink,” she says now, hoping that if her cheeks are red Freddie will just think it’s from the cold. “A - a coffee, or something, I mean. To return the favour.”

“Kind of defeats the point of a favour,” Freddie says, but she doesn’t look like she’s saying no. “Sure, why not? I know a nice place round the other side of the block. Got space for the buggies and everything.”

“You mean the one at Berry and Sixth?” Sarah says, not bothering to keep the pride out of her voice.

“Where’s that little Irish girl I met?” Freddie asks in a teasing voice. “Come on, I’ll race you.” She spins her pushchair around easily, and baby James lets out a very cute giggle as he finds himself moving.

They don’t race, obviously, because they’re on a sidewalk in New York with two tiny children. They walk along very sedately, catching up on bits of news about each other’s lives, mostly just enjoying the talking without worrying too much about what they’re talking _about_ \- or at least that’s how Sarah feels; she isn’t going to put words in Freddie’s mouth.

She tightens her grip on the pushchair as she tries not to think about just how happy she is to have run into Freddie again. She’s no believer in fate, not really, not when she’s being rational. But - well. She’d only been thinking the other day about finding a playgroup for Stevie, hadn’t she? More for her own sake than his; she’d been wanting to meet more new parents, maybe to swap a few tips and tricks, maybe just to commiserate about sleepless nights.

And now here she is, with Freddie.

If she was one for believing in signs, this one wouldn’t be hard to read at all.

* * *

* * *

Steve and James end up being great friends. Sarah smiles every time she thinks about that long-ago conversation, how hopeful she’d been without a clue where that hope was coming from.

She knows a bit more about it, now. She’s never been one for hiding from the truth. Ignoring it, sure, or downplaying it, but she doesn’t like to pretend something doesn’t actually exist, even if it would make her life a whole lot easier if she did.

She, Joe and Freddie manage to get Steve and James into the same school. George doesn’t seem to care all that much, so they mostly leave him out of discussions.

Sarah doesn’t hate George, or anything, but she can’t suppress a sort of - mild scorn, or something along those lines, every time she has to speak to him for longer than a quick greeting.

She knows that James had been an accident, that George and Freddie hadn’t even been in a relationship with each other at the time, hadn’t even been particularly close friends. They’d made the mutual decision to get married and raise the baby together, and Sarah might be wrong - she only sees their relationship in little snapshots, after all - but it always seems to her as though Freddie’s the only one putting actual effort into that decision.

Oh, sure, George is the breadwinner - though Sarah’s pretty sure Freddie would change even that if she could. But it isn’t just putting food on a table that makes a parent, and George doesn’t seem to be all that invested in taking care of James in any ways beyond the bare minimum.

Mostly, when she spends any time with George, Sarah comes away from the encounter with an unshakable gratitude that she ended up with Joe in her life. 

And a vague sort of sorrow for Freddie, who has never known that kind of - of _steadfast_ love.

* * *

* * *

“I’m so sorry,” Freddie says, sounding close to tears. “You have to let me know if there’s anything I can do to help. Please. Anything, I mean it.”

“Thank you,” Sarah says, knowing that her voice sounds like she’s about to fall to pieces. Like a fragile little vase, already threaded through with cracks, the kind you don’t bother taking too much care over because you can tell it’s going to shatter soon anyway. “I - when I’m at the hospital with - with him.” She can’t quite say _Joe,_ as though keeping her words impersonal will make them less true. “If you could take Stevie to school, some days?”

She isn’t going to fall apart, no matter how many people are waiting for her to. Joe needs her to hold steady, the way he’s done for her so many times over the years.

“Of course,” Freddie says immediately. “And he can come round to mine after, as well. Jamie will be glad of the company.”

No-one has the time to pick up the thousand shards Sarah feels like she wants to splinter into.

“Thank you,” she says again, numb and quiet. “I’ll let you know - when we know more.”

They already know as much as they need to. That there’s no hope, that Joe has months - at best - to live.

Adding more details to that will just seem like piling cruelty on top of cruelty. Sarah loves being a nurse, but she’s often thought before that she’d hate to be a doctor. She doesn’t know how they can bring themselves to deliver the kind of news they have to. 

Maybe they become immune, after a while, to suffering. To protect themselves, not out of a lack of sympathy.

She can understand that.

She had phoned Freddie instead of asking her to come round and talk in person, because she isn’t sure that the mask she’s trying to wear for Joe and Steve could hold itself together in front of - of -

Well.

In front of Freddie.

Sarah doesn’t cry, because crying won’t solve a single one of her problems right now. She has to find a way to tell her son that his father will soon be leaving them forever.

She looks up, but for once she doesn’t feel as though praying will help right now. What could possibly help her, with a task like this?

* * *

* * *

Joe dies over a year from the day they get the news. About six months longer than he’d been given, and yet it seems to pass between one blink and the next.

Sarah does cry, but she cries alone. With Steve, she puts on a brave face, because he’s still so young; she doesn’t think he understands that Joe isn’t ever coming back.

Of course, some days she isn’t sure whether _she_ truly understands that, so maybe it isn’t so much about youth as about -

About how much you loved a person, and how much you still do. 

Love without direction is a strange thing. It’s painful, of course it is. But it’s the kind of pain you don’t want to vanish, because the emptiness it would leave behind would be so much worse in every way.

She won’t ever stop loving Joe, and nor does she want to.

* * *

* * *

“Your son just gave my kid a new name,” Freddie says, as soon as she’s through the doorway.

“Hello to you too,” Sarah says, already moving to put the kettle on. “Did they make it to school on time?”

Ever since Joe - 

Well.

Ever since, Sarah and Freddie have kept on helping each other out with school drop-offs and pick-ups. It doesn’t make sense for them both to need those times off work, not when they live only a stop on the L away from each other.

“Only just,” Freddie says, getting the mugs and teaspoons out - it’s been years since she was an unfamiliar guest in this kitchen; she knows where everything is just as well as Sarah does, and neither of them feel the need to stand on ceremony with each other. “They kept stopping to introduce James to complete strangers. Honestly, we need to make better New Yorkers out of those kids. Who says hi to people on the subway?”

Sarah rolls her eyes, then replays that conversation in her mind. “Wait. What do you mean, Steve gave James a new name?”

Freddie laughs. “It turns out that there’s three kids called James in their class. They were getting annoyed about it the entire way to school, I nearly had to carry Steve when he got all outraged about our James being the best one.”

“I can definitely picture that,” Sarah says dryly. “He didn’t work himself up into an asthma attack, did he?”

There have always been four people who never fail to have one of Steve’s inhalers on them at any given moment. Steve and Sarah, obviously, and then Freddie and Joe had always been the other two. Sarah had given the one Joe always kept on him to James, who had promised very solemnly to take care of it, and then had given her a hug that had come closer than anything had in a while to making her cry.

Freddie shakes her head, pouring tea into their mugs as Sarah fetches the milk. “No, no. He did offer his middle name to James, though, because apparently Buchanan wasn’t going to cut it.”

Sarah raises her eyebrows. She pours the splash of milk Freddie likes first, and then gives herself a much more generous helping. “I mean, I can understand that.”

“Yeah, yeah. I told George Buchanan was a weird name - not that I’m one to talk, to be fair.”

They sit down at the kitchen table, the way they have done so many times before. Sarah doesn’t drink yet, just wraps her hands around her mug, hoping the warmth will spread from her hands through the rest of her body. “So, do you have a Grant Barnes on your hands then?”

Freddie looks torn between laughter and exasperation. “No, I have a Bucky,” she says.

“What?” Sarah thinks for a second. “Oh - Bucky, from Buchanan? Steve came up with that, really?”

“He did indeed. And I don’t think they’re going to let it go. James - or is it Bucky, now? - was already talking about how to persuade their teachers to call him that.”

Sarah can’t stifle her laugh in time. “Sorry,” she says, knowing she still looks too amused for Freddie to take her seriously. “They’re a pair, aren’t they?”

Freddie waves her hand dismissively. “No, don’t be sorry. It’s his name, he can change it if he wants to. Just - Bucky, really?”

“They’re only eight, it could have been a lot worse,” Sarah points out.

“True enough,” Freddie says. “Now, are you alright with me taking them out for Halloween this year?”

* * *

* * *

“Freddie?” Sarah asks, keeping her voice gentle. 

She hadn’t known what to expect, when Freddie had called round unexpectedly. Sarah would normally have been at the hospital right now, but she’d been told to take a day off to get some rest. She’s been feeling tired so often, lately, spread thin and stretched out, somehow, as though she’s trying to be too many people at once, and not quite succeeding at any of them.

She’s glad she was here, though. She doesn’t want to think about what Freddie’s second options might have been when she’s in a mood like this - not that she knows she was the first option, that’s just her funny little hope.

The boys are at school, will be for a few hours yet. They have more than enough time to talk about whatever’s troubling Freddie enough for her to get that look on her face.

Freddie just shakes her head. “Don’t - don’t call me that anymore,” she says, with an expressionless face that scares Sarah more than all the anger in the world would have.

“It’s your name,” she says, feeling half-dumb, words creeping up her throat only to be swallowed back down - is it better to say the wrong thing, or to say nothing at all?

She isn’t quite sure what her choices are, here, but she feels as though none of them are worth much.

Freddie pinches her lips together until they go bloodless, then lets out a long, slow breath. “Just call me Winnie, okay. That’s what everyone calls me now.”

Sarah hears an echo in her head from the day they first met. _All my friends call me Freddie._ She shivers, just a little, wondering what had happened to those friends, wondering why she’s never thought to ask.

She doesn’t know how to voice the question that’s burning inside her mind, and she knows it might do more harm than good if she does, but - she can’t let her friend down any more than she feels - fears - she already had done. And staying silent now would be its own kind of betrayal.

“Fre -” 

She swallows. “Winnie, then,” she says, her tongue almost tripping over the word. “I have to ask. Please don’t hate me. But - is George hurting you?” Before Freddie can reply, she quickly adds: “In any way, I mean. Not just - physically.”

“No!” 

“I’m sorry,” Sarah says, desperate not to make things any worse than she already has done. “I’m so sorry, I just -”

She breaks off. She just _what?_ She feels tongue-tied, the way she had all those years ago when the two of them had first met, like she couldn’t possibly have anything to say to this woman, who was so much more experienced than her in so very many ways.

“I hate him,” Freddie says, low and vicious, and Sarah feels something inside her retreat from the look on her friend’s face as she says the word _hate._

“You don’t mean that,” she tries, not convinced by her own words for even a second.

“I fucking do,” Freddie - Winnie? - spits out. “You know we never even liked each other? Not really. Not in the way you should before you chain yourself to someone for life, Jesus.”

“People can - can learn to love each other, though,” Sarah says, her voice shaking a little. She knows she barely even believes her own words, not in a situation like this - not that she even knows what this is, not really. 

Freddie - Winnie feels so wrong in her thoughts; she doesn’t know if she’ll ever get used to it - looks away, and Sarah doesn’t know what to make of the glimpse of her expression she’d seen before she turned. “Fuck off, Sarah. You don’t get it, you’ll never fucking get it. You had your Joe, and I’m - I’m so sorry he’s gone, he was a wonderful man. But you had him, and you loved each other, and it’s so fucking unfair that he got taken away. Just don’t -”

She cuts herself off, sharply, and Sarah doesn’t try to guess what she’d been going to say. Maybe Freddie had thought it would be unforgivable.

There isn’t much Sarah would treat that way, but that’s not the point right now. 

“I know I can’t fully understand,” Sarah says, realising with a shock that her voice sounds like it’s carrying a strength she's far from certain she’s actually feeling. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t listen,” she continues, watching Freddie closely, sensing that there’s some thread about to snap, somewhere deep inside her. “That doesn’t mean you can’t tell me, or that I can’t at least try. I - I care about you,” she says, knowing her voice sounds wooden, but also knowing that her words hold a truth she isn’t sure how to deal with. She hopes that Freddie both senses that truth and knows not to press her on it.

She carries so many unspoken words inside her, day after day after day. It’s bone-deep, the weariness that comes from silence, from the identity she refuses to give a voice to, even inside her own mind.

She can let these few small words free. Maybe they can help, maybe they can’t. All she can do is try.

“I know,” Freddie says, and her eyes look like they’re burning now, lit from inside with fire - the fire that levels forests, not the kind that keeps a hearth warm. “I know you do.”

Sarah nods, once, acknowledging that as the truth it is. “So tell me,” she says, and it isn’t an order, she wouldn’t do that, but she knows she’ll be answered anyway.

Freddie’s hands are clenched into fists, and with what looks like a great deal of effort she releases them. She looks at Sarah, and Sarah looks back, unflinching.

“That’s not me anymore. Freddie is - Freddie’s the woman who burned her fucking bra on the City Hall steps,” she says, and Sarah does flinch away then, both at the brutality in the words and at the hatred she can hear in Freddie’s voice. It’s the kind of hatred that gives no quarter, that spits on mercy, and Sarah knows that Freddie’s directing every last bit of it at herself. “She’s the woman who spray-painted shitty memorial poems for her friends that died of AIDS on the goddamn sidewalk, because no-one gave a damn about there being a couple less fags in the world, did they? Not unless they had to step around their fucking bodies, not unless it was in their faces somehow.” 

She’s leaving no room for any kind of gentle interpretation, and Sarah guesses that she’s aiming to shock, to drive away the one person on her side right now - because when someone’s cornered, when they don’t feel like they have any good options left, sometimes the only thing they can do is lash out, in a desperate attempt to hurt themself before the world does it for them.

Sarah stays silent. She isn’t here as judge and jury, and especially not as executioner. She’s here as a friend. And she’ll listen to everything Freddie has to say, no matter if it feels like each word is slicing into her chest.

Freddie looks like she’s unravelling; she’s run her hands through her hair until it’s sticking up everywhere, and her eyes have the same wildness in them that a trapped animal might show. “That’s not fucking _me,”_ she says, her voice quieter now - but no less harsh. “Freddie’s the butch lesbian, she’s the - _fuck you,_ Sarah, don’t give me that look, you fucking knew, don’t sit there with your fucking halo on and tell me you didn’t know! Jesus. Jesus fucking Christ. I - I’m not that woman anymore. I’m a mom, for fuck’s sake. I’m a mom, and a wife, and - and -”

She turns around, her hand covering her mouth, and leans forward until her forehead knocks against the wall. She doesn’t move again, just stays there as though she can’t hold her own weight up anymore, and after a few seconds her shoulders are shaking as though she’s crying - and crying in absolute silence, which somehow make it even worse.

Sarah’s hands feel numb. She tries to wipe her eyes, but her hands are shaking. And her eyes are dry anyway, she realises a moment later. How funny. She certainly feels like she’s crying along with Freddie. 

She stands up slowly, feeling as though her bones creak when she moves. She goes over to Freddie, not saying anything, and takes hold of her hand.

Freddie turns, as though the simple touch had thrown some kind of switch inside her. She half-collapses into Sarah’s shoulder, leaning there in just the same way as she had been leaning against the wall. “I can’t do this, Sarah,” she says, and the defeat in her voice is heartbreaking.

Sarah won’t allow her heart to break, though. She had held it together after Joe died, and she knows that it’s needed still.

“You can,” Sarah says, gripping Freddie’s hand so tightly it must be hurting her, but not wanting to let go. Hoping she can be some kind of anchor, a safe haven in the hopeless storm that Freddie’s world seems like right now. “You can. You’re the strongest person I know.”

Freddie shakes her head, looking almost - helpless, which is a thought Sarah shies away from as soon as it crosses her mind. “It’s all a show,” she says, leaning her head back until she’s staring blankly at the ceiling. “Just a show. And - I’m so tired of putting it on. I wake up every morning and it takes me so long to drag myself out of bed. I only get up for Jamie, most days. If he wasn’t there I’d just curl up and wait to - fuck, ignore me, I don’t know what I’m saying.”

Wait to what?

Die?

Sarah swallows down the words that rise to her lips, which are _you need help, we have to get you help._ She doesn’t know how well-received they’d be right now, and the last thing she wants to do is drive Freddie away from her. Especially if she’s the only person she can trust right now.

“You can do this,” she says again, praying that she isn’t lying right now. “Whether you call yourself Freddie, Winnie, or anything else, that doesn’t change who you are. I swear it. You’re still you.”

Sarah isn’t sure if it’s her words that finally get through, or something else, but a moment later she finds herself being held in a tight embrace, Freddie - Winnie - crying into her shoulder still, their arms wrapping around each other instinctively.

“You’re still you,” Sarah repeats softly, and the gentleness in her voice takes nothing away from the strength she tries to give the words. “You always will be, no matter what changes. I promise you that.”

* * *

* * *

“I have to talk to you,” Sarah says as soon as Winnie steps inside the apartment.

It’s been a while now since she’d trained herself to say - even to think - _Winnie,_ rather than Freddie, and it’s becoming more and more familiar every day. 

Not quite automatic; she doesn’t know if that will ever come. But - easier, at least, and she hopes that she made the right decision by not questioning Winnie on her request.

Winnie gives her a quick smile. “Coincidence. Got something to tell you as well.”

“Oh, you - you go first,” Sarah says, because she’ll take any excuse to not speak the words she needs to say. They feel like they’re burning holes in her throat and freezing her tongue at the same time; she knows she isn’t in physical pain, but it would almost be easier if she was.

That would be - manageable. Quantifiable. This is - this is too overwhelming for her to think about, not with everything else going on right now.

“I’m starting a course of antidepressants,” Winnie says, blunt as always. “Should have tried them years ago.”

“Oh,” Sarah says blankly, before the information properly registers. “I mean - that’s wonderful. I’m so proud of you.” She wonders if that’s too revealing, but decides it can’t be. It’s true, anyway. “I really am.”

Winnie doesn’t quite blush, but she does glance down at the floor for a moment. “Thanks,” she says, before shaking her head as if to clear the sentiment out of it. “Anyway, that’s my news. What did you want to tell me?”

Sarah opens her mouth, thinks about saying the words that won’t stop whispering through her mind: _I’m so tired, all the time, I went to the doctors and they want to do more tests, just ruling things out, I’m sure I’m fine, thought you should know._

She shakes her head. “Nothing important,” she says, ignoring Winnie’s curious glance. “Just - Steve’s been recommended for this new treatment. He won’t be strong enough for a few years, most likely, but I’m going to start researching it now anyway.”

She doesn’t feel guilty, exactly, for withholding the truth. But she does feel very alone, and knowing that she has nobody to blame but herself for it only makes the feeling deepen.

She will tell people. Just - not right now.

* * *

* * *

“Mrs Rogers! Look!”

Sarah bends down slightly, so that Bucky doesn’t have to look up to talk to her. Not that he’ll have to for too much longer, she thinks with a small note of melancholy. He’s only ten, but he’s tall for his age. The contrast between him and Steve keeps growing, and Sarah hasn’t quite managed to voice that thought out loud to Winnie yet, for fear it will make the difference between them suddenly more real. It’s not like Steve’s an unlikeable child - quite the opposite, though she supposes she’s a little biased - but, well. Bucky really is his only close friend, and Sarah knows how that feels.

“What have you got there?” she asks, honestly curious. It looks like a very confusingly-drawn house, only with legs and arms. 

“Bucky,” Winnie says suddenly. “Can you go see Steve for a few minutes?”

Sarah glances up at Winnie, who looks like she’s barely holding herself together - which might be deceptive; Sarah knows exactly how much it takes for her to fall apart - and then gently pushes Bucky in the direction of Steve’s room.

“He can’t get out of bed to play today, sweetie, but you can show him your drawing,” she says quietly. “And maybe you two can make one together? Me and your ma are just going to talk for a little while, alright?”

Bucky’s already heading out of the room, only remembering to kick his shoes off when he’s right outside Steve’s bedroom door. He looks back in clear apology, but Sarah just waves for him to go on in, which he does. 

She has more things to worry about that dirty carpets right now, she’s pretty sure.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, as soon as Bucky’s closed the door behind him.

Winnie smiles, and it comes so close to reaching her eyes that Sarah almost wants to hold her breath for a second as she watches it.

“I’m pregnant again,” she says, and the defeat in her voice makes Sarah ache like nothing else could right now.

When will Winnie get a break? Some time just to rest, to focus on herself without worrying about George or Bucky?

The antidepressants have been helping, Winnie says, and Sarah thinks she would know if that was a lie. But - _helping_ doesn’t mean that everything’s alright now; far from it. Winnie doesn’t like talking about it, but she’s said that her depression just makes her stop feeling much of anything. So the antidepressants are having the unwanted side-effect of letting more of her negative emotions through, the fear and sadness and anger, as well as the positive ones.

She says she doesn’t want to stop taking them, though, and Sarah hopes that’s still true after what Winnie had just told her.

She closes her eyes for a moment, trying to gather together all the thoughts that have just been scattered to the winds. She opens her mouth, but doesn’t speak for a moment - what can she even say? _Congratulations_ would be so far from appropriate right now, but she can’t bring herself to say _I’m sorry,_ either.

Something in-between the two, she supposes.

“What are you going to do?” she finds herself asking.

Winnie raises her eyebrows. “Are you saying what I think you are right now?”

Sarah presses her lips tightly together for a moment. She can’t believe she’s about to say this. “You have - choices, you know,” she says, hesitant but resolute. “There are so many options now.” 

“Sarah Virgin-Mary Rogers,” Freddie - Sarah can’t think of her as _Winnie,_ not right now - says, disbelief and something that might be a black kind of humour fighting with each other in her expression. “Are you - _you,_ the perfect little Irish-Catholic schoolgirl - are you seriously fucking telling me that you think I should get an abortion?”

“My middle name isn’t actually Mary,” Sarah says, her heart hammering in a way that would scare her if she wasn’t too focused on other things. She ignores Freddie’s mutter, something about _your middle name is a goddamn mouthful._ “And no, I’m not telling you anything. I’m saying -”

She sighs, and takes a long, slow breath, trying to calm herself down. “I’m saying that I saw a lot of bad things happen to good women, back home,” she continues. “And I saw what became of them when the nuns took them in, and - and it wasn’t what God would have wanted, I believe that with everything in me. I’m not telling you to - to - I’m not telling you anything. I’m saying that you’ve got choices, and I’m saying I’ll stand by you no matter what you decide.”

Later, after Winnie and Bucky have left again, Sarah kneels down in her bedroom, resting her head on the comforter.

 _Ár nAthair atá ar neamh,_ she begins, then pauses. She doesn’t want to say the Lord’s prayer for Fr - for Winnie, she realises. And not only because she isn’t sure Winnie would want her to.

Most people - most Catholics, especially - think of Mary, the Mother of God, as a paragon, a perfect saint of a woman. Someone who could do no wrong, couldn’t even think about committing a sin.

And maybe those things are true, and maybe they aren’t. That isn’t Sarah’s place to decide.

But there’s one truth she knows for certain. No matter what Mary became, she was once also a young woman, chosen to bear - literally - one of the most wonderful, terrifying, overwhelming responsibilities in the history of all humanity.

She must have had moments of fear, surely? Of doubt. 

She was only human, after all. And she had her Joseph, of course, which always makes Sarah smile. But still. She must have felt very lonely, some days. 

No, Sarah isn’t going to ask for intercession from God right now. 

_I saw a lot of bad things happen to good women,_ she’d said, and it hadn’t even been half of the truth. She loves her country, oh she loves it, and she loves her God too. But when she thinks about Aileen from the next village over, attacked by some tourist who’d come to see the Ireland the rest of the country was trying to forget. Little Aileen, who’d been all of fifteen, sent to the convent and never heard from again, her baby taken off to some English adoption agency. 

Magdalene Laundries. Asylums. She’d been threatened with them occasionally, growing up - _do you know what happens to girls who don’t behave themselves?_ \- until they’d almost lost their true sense of horror, growing less and less disturbing in her mind with each repetition.

Becoming used to something doesn’t mean it isn’t a crime, she knows now.

And those had been the good days, the times when people claimed everything was getting better. Sarah’s heard far worse from her ma, and from her grandma, and she knows the stories go back every generation, a dark cloud over her country’s history that so many people still pretend never existed.

She takes up her rosary, and begins her prayers anew, knowing that the Mother of God will be the one listening this time. She keeps Winnie in her thoughts with every word.

 _'Sé do bheatha, a Mhuire, atá lán de ghrásta,_ she recites in her head, her fingers finding the first bead in the sequence easily, her eyes still closed. 

_Hail Mary, full of grace._

And as she prays her intercession, she thinks of her friend, the one true friend she has in this country that still feels new to her, some days, and she prays for the strength to be strong for others. It’s the same prayer she’s recited to herself night after night over the last few years.

_Is beannaithe thú idir mná._

_Blessed art thou amongst women._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings: mentions of illness, AIDS, abortion, a homophobic slur depression, suicidal thoughts, self-hatred, domestic abuse, sexual assault, forced adoption. Ouch. That's a list and a half. Nothing is graphic at all, but sometimes it's very emotional.
> 
> I can't talk much about [Magdalene Laundries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalene_Laundries_in_Ireland) with such a short space; they were created to house/imprison 'fallen women' and you can probably infer a lot just from that. They still aren't spoken about as much as they should be, and their past existence still has a huge effect on society, though the last one was closed in 1996. After the [Vatican II reforms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Christianity_in_Ireland#Vatican_II) in 1962, Mass could be said in languages other than Latin. Sarah's family are proud to be Irish, and would have taught her to pray in Irish Gaelic as well as in Latin (and likely English as well). And one last note: even if George has never physically hurt Freddie, the [signs of domestic abuse](http://www.helpguide.org/articles/abuse/domestic-violence-and-abuse.htm) include much, much more than that. I'm leaving this aspect of the story deliberately vague until the giant sequel. 
> 
> Right. The next chapter will jump ahead a little, closer to the events of Grow to be.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe I finally managed to update this fic. This chapter has been on hold for about 8 months, as have all my WIPS. 
> 
> This is the chapter that covers Sarah being diagnosed and going through cancer treatment, including surgery. If you prefer to not read it, please don't worry as it isn't at all essential to the story. As always, feel free to message me (I'm sororising on tumblr as well) for detailed warnings.
> 
> This fic has changed from 2 long chapter to 4 shorter ones, because I felt that worked better.

* * *

Sarah looks blankly at her phone when it starts to ring. 

It isn’t very far away. Not really. Three steps. Two, maybe, if her legs are working right.

She doesn’t think anything is working, not at the moment.

It’s only been three weeks since she was officially diagnosed with breast cancer. Rationally, she knows that she can’t be much worse - physically speaking, at least - than she was then.

She doesn’t care much about being rational, not when her limbs are lead-heavy and her chest feels like it’s constantly on the point of caving in. _Might be psychosomatic,_ the doctor had said dispassionately, as though the fact that the pain might be in her mind would somehow make it less agonising. Less real.

The phone stops ringing. The silence echoes loud around her brain.

“Ma?”

She flinches, just a little, and hates herself straight after. “Stevie,” she says, praying with all the strength left in her that her voice sounds normal. “Could you pass me my phone, love?”

Steve picks it up just as it starts to ring again. He hands it over, looking worried and like he’s trying to look calm. 

She smiles at him, knowing that it wavers halfway through, and presses the answer button.

“Sarah, it’s me.”

_Oh._

Steve and Bucky are fourteen and fifteen now, easily old enough to arrange their own meet-ups. No need for their mothers to drop them off anymore. No need for chaperones.

Which is wonderful. It is. She’s so glad they’ve stayed friends; she can’t imagine them not having each other in their lives now. Steve-and-Bucky, they’d been as children, and things haven’t changed all that much, except that they’re looking for independence around every corner.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s a normal part of growing up; she’d be more worried if they hadn’t wanted to start doing things on their own. But it does mean that she doesn’t see _her_ friend nearly as often as she used to.

“Winnie, hello. It’s so nice to hear - hear from you,” she says, changing track in the middle of her sentence when she realises she’d been about to say _so nice to hear your voice._

There’s a pause. Sarah hopes that nothing’s wrong, but she can’t help but think of a few worst-case scenarios as the seconds go by.

Steve leaves the room, with one backward glance that she hopes is reassuring.

“George left me.”

Sarah blinks. She hadn’t been expecting that, not after so long. She hardly knows what to say - _sorry,_ obviously, should be her first response, but she isn’t quite sure it would be the truth.

“It - God. It feels like a weight’s been lifted off me that I didn’t even know was there,” Winnie continues before Sarah can say anything, and - well, saying she’s sorry after that would be about the furthest thing from the truth she can imagine. “I know I sound so dramatic right now, but that’s the truth.”

“Where did he go?” Sarah asks, still not sure if she’s taken all the implications of this in. Then she thinks of a much more important question. “Are you going to be alright? The twins -”

She feels alive in a way she hasn’t in - oh, in months, at least, and she doesn’t want to think about why.

“Don’t know where he is, don’t give a fuck,” Winnie says, and Sarah knows she isn’t imagining a new lightness in her friend’s voice. “I’ll be fine. I’ll figure it out. God, Sarah, I feel like I’m _free.”_

“I’m so glad,” Sarah manages to say, while inside her head her thoughts are spinning, trying to find something to latch onto. “I - I didn’t know things were that bad for you. I’m sorry.”

She should have made more of an effort. To reach out, to keep in touch, even when the boys were older. She’d been so ill, though, and she’d been trying to keep Winnie from knowing the worst of it, even though she knew pushing her away wouldn’t really make it hurt any less if the worst happened.

Excuse, she thinks to herself.

“Oh, they weren’t,” Winnie says easily. Sarah tries to believe her, but can’t quite manage it. “Really. He never hit me, never even threatened to.”

“That’s a low bar,” Sarah says, very quietly, even though she knows Steve won’t be eavesdropping.

“Yeah, alright.” Winnie’s rolling her eyes, Sarah’s almost certain of it. “I know what you’re saying. But he wasn’t a bad husband. Could have been better, sure, but he could have been a hell of a lot worse. It’s just - we were never in love with each other, and we both knew it. Not even sure we liked each other much, to be honest.”

 _A good husband wouldn’t have left,_ Sarah thinks. She won’t say it. Probably Winnie knows she’s thinking it; they’ve always been able to read each other so well.

“I’m glad you’re happy,” she says, 

“Yeah.” Winnie pauses, then, and Sarah braces herself for the question she knows is coming. “Sorry, I - I just barged right in with my news, there. How are you, Sarah? How’s - how’s everything going?”

 _How’s the cancer,_ is what she means. That’s what everyone means, when they ask how she is. 

“Not so bad,” Sarah answers easily, and no-one has to know that she’s replying to her own internal question.

The cancer’s doing pretty fucking great. She, on the other hand - well.

She’s never liked making people worry. Steve tells her that if she’s allowed to worry about him then he’s allowed to do the same for her, but she can’t help but feel like a bit of a failure as a mother when she hears that argument.

* * *

Steve tries to hide his horror when he wakes her up one morning and she leaves part of herself behind. He doesn’t do a very good job of it. Not cut out for a stage career, that boy.

They both look down in silence, at the straw-gold clumps of hair lying on the pillow,

“It was dead already,” she says, too-harsh, and she ignores the way he flinches. “You feel like playing hairdresser?”

She always used to keep that ungentle part of her locked away. Tucked in the deep corners of herself, neatly folded. The antithesis to Pandora’s box; Sarah lets out her loyalty and kindness and her faith, and keeps her anger and frustration buried deep. 

Most of the time, at least.

She knows she does it, and she’s never been quite sure why. Fr - Winnie had always been convinced it had something to do with her Catholic upbringing. And maybe that’s true, but it isn’t all of it. She thinks it might be because if she let go of some things, she’s afraid of what else might be revealed.

Steve’s hands - artist’s hands; she’s so glad Joe passed that love of his onto his son - hold steady as he crops her hair short, then uses the clippers he bought for himself - back when he’d been hopeful that he’d need to shave more than once a fortnight, bless him - to give Sarah a careful buzzcut. 

She can’t bring herself to care as much as she should. She knows for some people, women especially, that this loss might be one small grief too many. But she’s been avoiding mirrors for a while now. This is just one more reason.

* * *

“Just cut them off,” Sarah says, not trying to soften her words like she usually does.

The treatment isn’t working, at least not as well as they’d like. She knows what she wants. Has known for a while, though this is the first time she's said it out loud to another person.

“That’s a huge decision,” her doctor says, and Sarah has to restrain herself from rolling her eyes. No shit.

She can’t associate her breasts with anything good anymore. Not with Joe’s tentative caresses, not with that gorgeous blue dress that shows them off, not with feeding her first and only child.

They’re dead weight as much as hair left behind on a pillow, and her voice holds steady when she says again: “Get rid of them. I want them gone.”

She has to go through endless formalities, on what exactly the procedure will entail, on all the options she has when it comes to reconstructive surgery. She has to sign her initials by a list of about thirty possible complications, with _death_ listed right there at the end.

“No-one has ever died, of course,” the nurse says cheerfully. “But we have to put it, you know!”

Sarah scribbles _SR_ one more time, and puts the pen down. “Of course,” she says mildly.

These days, she’s some odd mix of terrified of dying and feeling very calm about the possibility. Sometimes one or the other wins out, sometimes she manages to feel both emotions at once. _There’s no wrong way to feel,_ people tell her; _everything you’re going through is a perfectly normal response,_ and she doesn’t know how to explain that it doesn’t actually help to hear that.

* * *

She never quite remembers the days after surgery. When she looks back, it’s like she’s watching them through fog, or as though they’re the memories of someone else. She’s fine with that; she doesn’t think she’s missing out on anything but pain and confusion.

She remembers looking down, once, at her new chest, and flinching away in horror at the yellow iodine stains and the thick black stitching holding her skin together. _I look like a corpse,_ she can’t help but think, and she doesn’t look again for two days.

Time goes by. Steve insists on lifting everything for six weeks, even the kettle, until Sarah puts her foot down and they split the household chores between them. Steve still has the lion’s share, of course, but there’s a cleaner from an agency linked to the hospital who comes three times a week as well, so he manages to find time for schoolwork.

Sarah still feels it isn’t quite fair, that Steve’s missing out on being a regular teenager, but he just rolls his eyes whenever she tries to bring that up. Bucky’s round fairly often, or Steve’s round at Bucky’s place, and they seem to be building themselves a lovely little group of friends. So she can’t be doing everything wrong.

“Ma, will you please trust me,” Steve says one day, in about as serious a voice as she’s ever heard from him. “You’re _not_ asking too much from me. I like cooking, and I don’t mind a bit of cleaning, and I like spending time with you. You’d do the same for me a thousand times over -”

Sarah opens her mouth to reply, and Steve holds his hand up.

“Let me finish,” he says, sounding older than his years. “I know you’re going to say that’s because parents are supposed to do that for their children. But it’s just us two, and I don’t see why we can’t help each other. I promise I’ll tell you if it gets too much.”

She doesn’t reply for a long moment. “Alright,” she says eventually, and Steve immediately comes over and hugs her, very gently. “We’ll keep going and see what happens. Guess that’s all anyone can do, really.”

* * *

“You’re sure?” Sarah asks, when she gets the news she’s officially in remission. “You’re - sure?”

Her doctor gives her that same calm smile he’s given her at every stage of this process. It’s intended to be reassuring, she knows that, but she can’t help but find it unnerving. If he smiles the same way at her when she’s sick and when she isn’t, would he smile that way on her deathbed?

That probably wouldn’t be a helpful bit of feedback, she reminds herself. 

“Your sense of humour’s a hell of a lot more morbid, these days,” Winnie says to her a few days after the news, then looks like she regrets it a second later. They’ve been making more of an effort to spend time with each other recently, and Sarah hadn’t realised how much she’d missed that until she’d got it back again.

“Being near death will do that to a person, I guess,” she says dryly before Winnie can take back her remark.

“Fuck. Sorry.”

Sarah raises an eyebrow. “Since when have we tiptoed around the truth with each other?”

She can’t help but remember that night, long ago now - _don’t call me Freddie._

Maybe Winnie’s remembering it too; there’s some emotion in her face that Sarah can’t find a word for. She doesn’t try, not really. Winnie knows her better than anyone save Steve, and maybe the feeling’s mutual and maybe it isn’t, but even so: everyone deserves to keep their thoughts private if they want to. 

“I’m so glad you’re going to be okay,” Winnie says, very quietly, and Sarah doesn’t answer the truth shining from her friend’s eyes, but nor does she turn away from it.

She notices that Winnie had said _going to be,_ not _that you’re okay,_ and for reason it makes her chest feel just a little lighter.

She _is_ going to be okay. She’s going to live.

* * *

Sarah had never, ever thought that she would tell Steve she was - well, bisexual, she supposes, though she never quite feels comfortable with that word.

It’s definitely the right one, she knows that much. It’s not that. It’s just - she’d spent so long in confusion, and then in thinking she was damned, and then just plain ignoring it, as though it was an inconvenient house guest who would disappear if you ignored them enough.

Finding out that there was one simple word that she could identify with should have been comforting. 

And maybe she’s begging for trouble, but somehow it all feels _too_ simple, some days. She still can’t quite believe that it’s alright to feel this way, even though she goes well into Queens every Sunday, to the most progressive Catholic church in the city. Even though Steve casually mentions two girls at his school that are dating, even though she lives in New York, the city where

It still feels too good to be true. 

Or - not quite that.

It feels too good to be true for _her._

She’s accepted it as a fact, now. But it still doesn’t feel quite like it’s really part of her, like she truly has the right to claim that identity. 

So when the opportunity comes for her to tell Steve and she finds herself _taking_ it, rather than changing the subject, she’s almost too shocked to process what’s actually happening.

“I am,” she says, her heart racing. She could still turn back, it would be easy as anything to tell Steve she’d meant something else.

“I’m bisexual.” Has - has she ever said that word aloud? She doesn’t think so, feels like she’d remember this feeling, this terror-elation that’s filling up every corner of her mind.

She doesn’t stumble, she says it clearly, if quietly, and she watches the face of her son as he listens to her story. 

_Agus is beannaithe toradh do bhroinne_

_And blessed is the fruit of thy womb._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm posting the final chapter with this, so that you'll finally get some more happy times for Sarah. This probably goes without saying, but Sarah's reaction to certain things, in particular her hair falling out and her decision to have a double mastectomy, are not remotely representative and are only meant as what I felt would work for her in this specific situation. 
> 
> Having said that, I am always willing to edit if anything at all has been handled badly, and I am always grateful to anyone who lets me know if I've been insensitive/just plain wrong.


	4. Chapter 4

* * *

It’s Steve and Bucky’s last year of high school, and Sarah can’t quite get her head around it.

Sarah and Winnie started spending even more time together around the Christmas holidays, and they haven’t drifted apart again yet. Sarah can’t help but hope that they never do, but she can’t bring herself to say that. 

It would sound so -

Well. She doesn’t want to say it, and maybe she isn’t quite ready to admit to herself why.

It’s the day after she’d come out to Steve, and her heart still races every time she replays the moment in her head. She maybe should have cancelled her coffee da - her coffee _meetup_ with Winnie, but she hadn’t been able to think of a decent reason to.

Not that she’d put much effort into it, really; she can admit that.

It’s just - this is all so convoluted now. It hadn’t exactly been simple before she and Steve had talked, and now that she knows Bucky and Sam are dating, and knows that Winnie _doesn’t_ know - it’s a lot to think through, and -

“You’re a million miles away,” Winnie says, with a fondness in her eyes that makes Sarah panic all over again. “Should I be offended?”

Sarah shakes her head, automatic, trying to think of how to respond.

Why not with the truth? Part of it, at least.

She’s spoken it once. Surely the second time can only be easier?

“I told Steve something yesterday,” she says, non-committal still - she can back out; Winnie won’t push. They’ve never pushed each other unless they had to, unless there were no other options but through.

Winnie looks curious, but not overly so. “Oh?”

“I came out to him,” she says, and then presses her mouth shut again, until her lips feel bloodless.

Winnie doesn’t seem surprised. “Good for you,” she says easily.

Sarah blinks. It’s - it’s not that she wanted Winnie to be shocked, or even that she’d expected her to be, but - 

“How long have you known?” she asks, not quite meeting her friend’s eyes.

She twists her hands together, linking her fingers tightly and pressing inwards, until patches of her skin light up colourless. 

A gentle touch on the back of her wrist stills her instantly. “You know the answer to that,” Winnie says, one fingertip resting lightly on the point where Sarah’s wristbone juts out, a barely-there point of contact that’s somehow setting every nerve in her body alight.

Sarah does know. Has always known, the way she thinks Fr - Winnie must have.

“I loved Joe so much,” she says, and only the faintest hint of mourning colours the words. These years have been long, without him. But they’ve passed, and as they did Sarah’s anger and grief at his loss have faded.

Not disappeared. Never that. But - faded, yes, in the way that 

Winnie wraps her hand around one of Sarah’s. “You still love him,” she says, not sounding unhappy at the thought. “Of course you love him. I wish I’d been able to love George in that way. I was - I was a little jealous of you two.” Sarah glances up, startled, and she’s in time to see the way Winnie’s mouth twists into that wry little smile of hers, that self-deprecating one she puts on when she’s admitting something she isn’t sure she won’t regret opening up about. “Course, I wasn’t ever sure which of you I was more jealous of,” she continues, not quite meeting Sarah’s eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Sarah says, not quite knowing where the impulse to apologise came from, but believing it was the right one when Winnie’s smile deepens, just a fraction.

“Oh, Sarah. You never had anything to be sorry for. I’ve never regretted meeting you, not for a second.”

Bravery comes in many forms. Steve used to tell her how brave she was, when she was fighting the cancer, and he kept telling her even when she knew full well that she had no more fight left in her, that if death came for her she would sit back with empty eyes and follow.

A small part of her knows that isn’t true. Knows that she would have fought, right till the end, to stay with Steve. But sometimes the things that tell you you’re worth something are the ones you want to ignore, as odd as it might sound.

Sometimes it’s easier to believe you won’t be missed that to remember the people who love you, the people you might have to leave behind.

She’s been brave before. She can accept that, now, and know that acceptance isn’t the same as arrogance.

She turns her wrist around, so that their hands meet, palm to palm, and their fingers link together for the first time.

She can be brave again.

“You know I love you,” she says, quiet but strong, and she wonders if her life will ever be quite the same again.

* * *

“I can’t believe we’re going on our first date for Valentine’s Day,” Sarah says for about the third time.

Winnie looks up from the menu, smiling a little. “It doesn’t feel like our first date to me. Not really.”

Sarah ducks her head a little, resisting the urge to look around the restaurant to see if anyone’s watching them - two middle-aged women out together in a setting that couldn’t really be more romantic without them being in Paris or somewhere. “You’re right,” she says, meeting Winnie’s gaze instead of glancing at the table next to them. “It doesn’t.”

“I didn’t tell Bucky where I was going,” Winnie says, frowning a little. “I was going to, but - he’s had a lot on his mind lately. He thinks I’m seeing some new man.”

Sarah puts her menu down. “Steve knows. He guessed, actually. Well, that it was you.”

“Really? How did he manage that?”

“I think Bucky mentioned the restaurant you were going to, and - well, coming this soon after I came out to Steve, it wasn’t all that hard to put two and two together.”

Winnie hums to herself, and takes a sip of water. “I guess not. He doesn’t think we’ve been sneaking around though, right?”

Sarah laughs. “No, no. He knows this is a first date. He probably won’t ask too many questions; what teenage boy really wants to know about his mother’s love life?”

“True,” Winnie says, smiling a little. “Bucky didn’t even ask the name of my mystery guy. Probably because he’s too busy panicking about his own date.”

Sarah picks up her glass of water and takes a drink, just so she has something to do. She swallows, feeling a little nervous. This is a rather odd position for her to be in, her knowing that it’s Sam Bucky’s on a date with while Winnie doesn’t have any idea.

“Well, enough talk about our sons,” she says, hoping she sounds the same as usual. “I know they’re what brought us together, but surely we’ve got other things to talk about?”

That gets the laugh she’d hoped it would, and conversation does turn to other subjects. They can’t help but bring their talk back to their kids every so often, but Sarah wouldn’t have it any other way. She can’t quite take in how - how _natural_ this all feels. It’s just like they’d said at the start; she isn’t feeling any of the nerves that they say should accompany a first date.

“I’m so glad we’re doing this,” she says as soon as they’ve both finished their main course. “I know it took me a long time to be brave.”

Winnie looks sad for a moment, then smiles. She reaches her hand across the small table and places it over Sarah’s. “Oh, don’t you worry about that. We’ve got all the time in the world.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea when I'll have a chance to write the giant sequel. I'm not even going to guess, I don't want to get anyone's hopes up. But now you're all caught up with where Winifred and Sarah's relationship is in Grow To Be at least! Feedback welcome as always. Sorry again for the very long delay between chapter updates.


End file.
